Chelsea Loses to Everton 3-1

Chelsea loses again, this time at the hands of Everton at Goodison Park by a score of 3-1. The Blues have now only been able to take four points from their first five Premier League matches. Everton’s Steven Naismith scored an impressive hat-trick after coming off the bench to heap more misery on Chelsea’s dismal start to this campaign.

Jose Mourinho is used to being in the headlines; however, it is normally for his comments or some part of his wacky antics, it is not usually because his team is playing poorly. A lot of things can be said about Mourinho and his style of managing, but rarely, if ever, in his career has he had to face questions of whether he would be sacked or not purely on his managing prowess. Chelsea has started this campaign about as poorly as possible, especially for being the defending Premier League champions, and a lot of it has to do with Mourinho’s stubbornness.

The Problem for Chelsea so far this year has been their age and lack of pace along with their predictability, and those are two things that as manager Mourinho should change, but right now he seem unwilling. For as good as he has been during his time at Chelsea Branislav Ivanovic looks to be on his last leg of being able to compete at the Premier League level, and that has been evident in each of the Blues first five Premier League Matches. For some reason, though Mourinho does not want to replace him, even though he spent over $20 million on a natural left back in Baba Rahman who could force Cesar Azpilicueta back to his natural right back position making it an easy substitution. To his credit Mourinho has realized that he needs the pace and physicality of Kurt Zouma in his starting 11, but that is the only change that he has been willing to make to his squad that clearly needs a good shake up.

The problems Chelsea have faced early in this year cannot be pinned just on Mourinho, many of the players who experienced such good form last year have failed to replicate it so far this year. Cesc Fabregas, Diego Costa, and Nemanja Matic have looked out of sorts this year and have not been nearly as dominant as they were last campaign. Eden Hazard has played like the Premier League’s best player so far, but he has also been the only good-looking attacker who seemingly can get no help to finish off attacks. Oscar, who was a creative cog in last year’s team, has barely even seen the field except for being the best player on the field in the first match against Swansea. It seems as though Mourinho needs to use all his tricks to turn this around, and players like Oscar will hopefully get more of a chance to show they can contribute.

Everton played a sensational match to beat Chelsea that cannot be taken away from them. Their defense, especially Chelsea transfer target John Stones, was stout and kept Chelsea from ever really forming well-sustained attacks. The Blues only goal really came from nothing as Nemanja Matic took the space he was given and blasted a long-range effort. Other than the Matic goal there were not a whole lot of good chances to speak of from the Blues, they had some good moments on the counter-attack but failed to capitalize on the score sheet.

Steven Naismith played brilliantly and former Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku was unlucky to not score with a handful of good opportunities. Like Chelsea Everton have not had a great start to the campaign and needed to get some points from this match to get back on the right track. With this win however Everton are now in fifth and have only suffered one loss, at the hands of currently unbeatable Manchester City. After this big win, Everton will face Swansea, who have started very well and have the very same points record as Everton so far.

Chelsea loses again in the Premier League to a determined Everton team who got a hat-trick from substitute Steven Naismith. The Blues will have a chance to turn things around midweek against a team they should have an easy time with in Maccabi, Tel-Aviv in the Champions League. On a day when both Manchester clubs got three points, this loss is extra hard to take, especially now that only five matches in the Blues trail Manchester City by 11 points.